August 6, 2007

Campesinos and Teachers Protest in Mexico City

By George Thomas Clark

In the Mexican state of Veracruz prized for oil and agriculture and beautiful beaches, at about four o’clock on a 1992 morning, hundreds of campesinos and their families in three pueblos were shaken awake by rumbling. Some were too startled to move. Others ran out of their wood and cardboard shacks and saw caterpillars grinding toward them and waved at the drivers to stop. The drivers and their armed and uniformed escorts motioned and yelled for everyone to clear out. The campesinos were granted a few minutes to dress and grab a few belongings before the caterpillars lumbered on to destroy their homes as well as schools and churches. This ended more than a decade of living on “ejidos,” public land they had farmed and believed should be theirs to use forever.

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July 31, 2007 – Last week in Mexico City a private driver from my hotel was guiding me down Paseo de la Reforma, the grandest boulevard in the country, indeed one of the most elegant and monument-rich in all the Americas, when the scenery suddenly erupted with large banners that said, “The Senate Doesn’t See or Hear Us” and “The Senate Doesn’t Notice Us”. A man named “Dante Delgado” was blamed. On the other side of the visual protests loomed bleak plastic dwellings anchored by ropes and extending diagonally no higher than three or four feet.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“This is the Movement of the 400 Pueblos,” said the driver. “Every day they take off their clothes and protest in public.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I want to talk to them.”

“Fine. Just ahead, at the Monumento a la Madre, they have their main camp. But I’ll have to use the public parking lot.”

“No problem. I’ll pay.”

We entered the concrete campground, bordered to the west by the gigantic stone Madre, and for several minutes walked around, noting the difficulties of living there, before we approached a few men in a group.

“I’m a teacher and writer from California,” I said. “May I please have an interview?”

In less than a minute they’d summoned their spokesman, an energetic fellow who shook my hand and introduced himself as Jaime Rodriguez Barrientos.

“Who’s Dante Delgado?” I asked.

“Dante Delgado was the interim Governor of Veracruz in 1992,” said Rodriguez. “He was corrupt and repressed campesinos. He’s the one who ordered the destruction of our villages – Alamo Temapache, Poza Rica, and Martinez de la Torre. Then he invented charges and jailed 300 people. Twelve were in jail for seven years and many others from eight months to two years. We struggled for the freedom of our comrades until 2000. Since then we’ve been struggling for the return of our land.”

“Why did Dante Delgado destroy your homes?”

“He represents the interests of the rich and the powerful.”

“Is he taking bribes?” I asked.

“We’re not saying he takes bribes. But he’s certainly our enemy. So are the men who succeeded him as governor – Patricio Chirinos, Miguel Aleman, and Fidel Herrera, who’s in office now.”

“You believe the land you lived on belonged to you.”

“Yes, we’d established ourselves there and no wealthy men had a legal right to it. Delgado claims that what he did was legal and the right thing.”

“How long have you been here in Mexico City?” I asked.

“Since April 11, 2007.”

“Why now?”

“Dante Delgado was out of power after 1995. In this country there’s no point in chasing someone with no office. When Dante became a senator last year, we decided to go after him.”

Gradually some men from the camp had begun to gather around us and about 20 were now watching the interview.

“I hear you guys have been publicly protesting in the nude,” I said.

“That’s right,” said Rodriguez. “And sometimes our wives, too.” Several of us laughed.

“What is the purpose of taking off your clothes in public?”

“By protesting naked we’re demonstrating that we lack justice. Every day we do this from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. We go all over, to the Zocalo, the Palacio de Belles Artes, to the Senate of the Republic, to Dante Delgado’s office, and other places.”

“Aren’t you concerned about losing public support by being naked in public?”

“Only three or four out of a hundred are offended.”

“What about the police? Don’t they do anything about the nudity or camping here?”

“No. No problem,” Rodriguez said, and handed me a photo. “I want you to have this.”

I thanked him and examined four proud men, two standing at attention and two playing drums. “You guys are in good shape.”

“Of course, we’re campesinos,” declared a man from the group.

“How long will you stay here?” I asked.

“Until we get a response,” Rodriguez said. “Until the senate demonstrates that it understands it needs to investigate Dante Delgado. He’s a coward. He hid from an interviewer from TV Azteca, but he can’t hide from us. We’re going to chase him the rest of his life.”

I extended my hand toward plastic huts stretched much too low to stand in.

“Are you guys, and in many cases your wives and children, comfortable here?”

From the group a young man said, “When it rains hard at night, the water comes in under the plastic. We have to sleep sitting up, and that’s hard.”

“Where do you go to the bathroom?” I asked.

“We use the gas station’s bathroom across the street,” said Rodriguez. “It costs two pesos (about 20 cents) each time.”

“Expensive,” I said. “And food, all the other things. How do you support yourselves?”

“We get donations, usually one or two pesos, but sometimes people give us a lot more.” (My driver and another Mexico City resident told me they believe the opposition PRD party is also providing support. Its leader, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, lost a close and disputed presidential election last year to Felipe Calderon.)

As I spoke to the men, several women were dunking clothes in buckets of water and scrubbing garments on stones at the base of the Monumento a la Madre. Two men, glistening brown in the sun, stood near them, washing themselves with rags also dipped in buckets. All water for the 300 protestors comes from a single tap.

“I don’t know how long you can last under these conditions,” I said.

“Bathing like that is no problem,” said a muscular man from the photo. “Like typical campesinos we bathed in arroyos. We’re living better here than in Veracruz. Here we only have one family in each place. In Veracruz we had four families in one-room casitas of wood and cardboard.”

Mexican Teachers Protest

A few blocks from the campesinos, at the Monumento de la Revolución, 3,000 teachers were protesting. The following day, with another driver from my hotel, I entered an impressive campground that featured new tarps pulled together high and wide enough to walk under and stretch out. I identified myself and requested an interview. Shortly, Alvarez Juarez was brought forth, and he and three other teachers, one a woman, offered the driver and me comfortable chairs in a patio-like area beneath canvas stretched between two residences.

“What is your position?” I asked.

“I’m the National Coordinator of Education Workers from Guerrero,” said Juarez, a polite but serious man. “I’ve taught elementary school 30 years in Acapulco.”

“What are the issues you’re most concerned about?”

“We’re here because of the new law about our pension fund. We used to pay 3.5 percent, now the government says we have to pay 10.6 percent.”

“I’m a teacher in California, and we pay 8 percent and have very good benefits,” I said.

“You have to put in more than 3.5 percent to get the benefits you need.”

“We aren’t going to get anything. They’re going to rob us.”

“Who are they?”

“President Felipe Calderon and Esther Gordillo, leader of the National Education Workers’ Union, and the politicians and the business interests they represent. They claim they want to increase pension benefits for our children and our retirement benefits and to improve hospitals and health care, but we know they really want more money to pay their debts to the International Monetary Fund and the Word Bank.”

At that moment I knew little about Esther Gordillo and the teacher’s union in Mexico, and thought the eternal cry of corruption was exaggerated. A little reading, however, revealed that Gordillo’s predecessor, Carlos Jonguitud, “was accused of masterminding the assassination of at least 150 dissident teachers, primarily in the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.” Gordillo by comparison is a model of moderation, having only “been implicated in the deaths of several teachers that were struggling to democratize the National Education Workers’ Union.”

The problem is systemic rather than personal. Gordillo is merely the latest head of a union, like most in Mexico, that has long abused its members. According to Colin Brayton of WorldPress.com, recent surveys show that 98 percent of Mexican teachers “believe the main priority of their leadership is to enrich themselves and hold on to power… and 87 percent believe that their dues are held onto by the leadership and used to buy support… and only 1 percent of (union) members consider that their leadership has a genuine commitment to education.”

“The government has been closed and hasn’t given any response to our concerns,” Juarez continued. “The government says it’s a good law and we need to accept it. We’re going to keep trying to change the law. We have marches, protests, lots of activities. On July 26 we’re going to march at the United States Embassy.”

“Why the U.S. Embassy?” I asked.

“To protest the war in Iraq and the arrogant treatment of people in Latin America.”

Unlike the dour Juarez, his colleague next to me was enjoying the interview, and said, “We know Americans think Mexicans are sucking their thumbs. But we know what’s going on. We have eyes. That’s why we don’t like your president, Adolph Bush.”

“I don’t care for Bush, either,” I said. “But I guarantee he’s a long way from being Adolph. And, by the way, I wrote a book about Adolph, so I know.”

“Just remember, we Mexicans aren’t sucking our thumbs,” said the colleague.

Juarez leaned forward and handed me a tabloid titled “Program of Activities” with daily schedules comparable to boot camp. Every day starts at 6 a.m. with bathing then community cleaning, breakfast, two hours of conferences in an auditorium followed, in different places, by lectures, another hour in the auditorium then more meetings, lunch at three p.m., workshops, cultural events in the auditorium, an hour for dinner at 9 p.m., and two hours of free time ending at midnight when most are already in bed, preparing for the next 6 a.m. wakeup.

“Where do you guys, and the ladies and kids I see around here, go to the bathroom?” I ask.

“We use the public bathroom across the street. It costs three pesos each time and five to bathe.”

“How are you supporting yourselves?”

The Secretary of Public Education is still paying our teachers’ salaries, about 3,000 pesos every fifteen days, 6,000 a month.”

“That’s about 600 dollars a month,” I said. “Is that sufficient?”

“It’s not sufficient even when we’re just maintaining our homes. Now we’re maintaining them as well as our community here.”

“How long are you prepared to stay?”

“We’ve been here since May 7, 2007 and are prepared to stay a long as necessary.”

“Are you going to march naked in public?”

“We’re not going to undress, unless we get desperate,” said a still unsmiling Juarez.

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George Thomas Clark is the author of Hitler Here, a biographical novel, and Outliving Flynn, a short story collection.  He can be contacted through his web page at http://www.GeorgeThomasClark.com/.